Violence
gurjars mainly targeted the Jaipur-Delhi, Jaipur-Agra and the Mumbai-Delhi transport routes as they believed it would capture the attention of the government and media altogether and resorted to violence when security forces tried to clear the roads and railways. Many gurjars alleged the role of home minister and chief minister as provocative and oppressive. They blamed the government for giving the agitation a violent turn by firing at people gathering around patoli village whose bodies were then preserved using salt and ice for the duration of the entire period of agitation. The demand of punishing those responsible for killing the villagers was added to that of gaining reservation. The news of dead bodies lying without cremation attracted many gurjars from far off areas and even other states which added to the strength of agitators which were now by no means could have been controlled by the police or the rapid action force and thus the Indian Army was called in. However the violence only stopped after some assurances from the government. Police in Sikandra town fired at protesters who torched a police station and two buses and shot and wounded a policeman, said Amanjit Singh Gill, Rajasthan's director-general of police. Protesters also burned down a police station in the nearby village of Chandra Guddaji, Gill said. Fifteen demonstrators died Friday when police fired live ammunition and tear gas to halt rioting, said Singh. A police officer was also beaten to death. At least 70 injured people were hospitalized in Jaipur, the state capital, and the town of Dosa.
Demonstrators blocked a major highway linking Jaipur to Agra — site of the world famous Taj Mahal monument — stranding thousands of people. Thousands of army, police and paramilitary forces patrolled villages to control the violence.
26 May witnessed sporadic violence when more than 36 towns observed a bandh to protest against the police firing. Six wagons of a goods train on its way to Agra derailed near Bandikui station in Dausa district due to tampering of rail tracks, allegedly by the Gurjars. Northern railway cancelled nine trains passing through Rajasthan and diverted several others to different routes.
Read more about this topic: 2008 Gurjar Unrest In Rajasthan
Famous quotes containing the word violence:
“Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity. In male culture, police are heroic and so are outlaws; males who enforce standards are heroic and so are those who violate them.”
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“The tumultuous populace of large cities are ever to be dreaded. Their indiscriminate violence prostrates for the time all public authority, and its consequences are sometimes extensive and terrible.”
—George Washington (1732–1799)